


It's So Much More Friendly With Two

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Series: Pre-13 Fic: Post-Reveal, Pre-Series [5]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Fan Characterisation, Gen, Non-Linear Series Order, One Instance Of Twelve-With-The-Spoon-Style Swearing, Post-Reveal Pre-Series, Pre-13 Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: “Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they turn out to be Hostile Animals?” - A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-PoohIn which the Doctor acquires a pig, climbs a tree, gets herself stuck in a fence and purloins a cauliflower.(can be read as standalone)





	It's So Much More Friendly With Two

  


* * *

  


The grass is yellow and slightly crunchy under the Doctor's feet. There's a weather front due. Hasn't rained for - she sniffs loudly - two weeks. Which is quite a long time for - she comes to a stop - Wales. Specifically - she wiggles her feet more firmly against the ground and bounces on her heels twice - Cantref.

She carries on making her way down the hill, towards the noise and smells of the little village fair. It'll be interesting. It might be. At the very least it might have a toffee apple. She hopes the red and glossy kind, the ones where biting into them is like cracking a spoon against your teeth.

There's a mass of people walking back from the other side of the field, waving tickets and groaning or smiling. The Doctor shoves her hands into her pockets, and slouches into the pack. A little girl beside her is showing everyone a fluffy stuffed pig.

"I won! I knew she was little but good and I picked her and she won!" She grins a gap-toothed smile at her, but before the Doctor can remember how to make her face work, she's skipped off to tell someone else.

A loud squeal comes from the other side of the field. Her ears prick up immediately, and she shoves her way through the crowd.

It's not a person, well, it's not a person making the noise at least. A grizzly looking man, dressed all in red with a blue rosette, is tying a young pig to a stake. It's fighting so hard she can already see the marks where the rope has burned against it.

"Oi!" The Doctor shouts, slightly hoarsely, striding over. She hopes her inner-Donna will carry on, but she doesn't, and she's back on her own again.

The man, finished with the pig, stands behind his stall and hits his hands on it.

"Sorry, m' dear, what can I get for you?"

"What're you doing to that child?" Child's not the word but it's been so long she can't think of the right one. He laughs at her, as if she's joking.

"Where are its parents?" The man points to the meat on his displays, still chuckling.

"Love, it's a pig."

" _You're_ a pig." She replies, crouching down to its level.

"I haven't harmed her. She just knows where she's going later, don't you sosej?"

"Win them fame and fortune, and they still try to kill you anyway." She mumbles. The pig blinks at her.

"Saw the race did you?" Without looking at him, the Doctor shakes her head and points at the rosette. "Well hardly 'fame and fortune' - a ribbon and a pittance." The man sighs, tying a butchers apron around his waist.

"I'll take it. The pig." The Doctor decides, watching the pig waggle its ears at her. She tries to wiggle hers back, but doesn't know if she can in this body - strange, because it's been quite a while, and that's pretty high on the list of First Things To Check. She must've got distracted.

"Ah, you don't want Basil. Spent her life running, she's gonna be tough as hell." The Doctor wrinkles her nose, suddenly acutely aware of the smell of pork. "Or if you want her for her brains, don't bother, she's a runner not a thinker, and she's already past her prime. You don't get more than 'bout ten fairs out of em, and she's done a handful more 'an that. And besides, she bites."

"Sold." The Doctor says firmly. She looks over her shoulder to make sure her surroundings haven't changed. "See that cart over there?"

"I do."

"Nice furniture, rugs, general human house thi- uh, house things?"

"Yyyes..."

"You get five minutes to go through it and grab whatever you want." The Doctor distantly remembers being caught thieving by one of the Professors. He had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said that if he was going to rob one of them, he might as well be stealing from all of them. This probably isn't how she was supposed to apply that lesson.

"I'd prefer cash if it's all the same."

"Come on now, you look like a country man." If she slightly overemphasises the 't', he doesn't notice in his distraction with evaluating the goods. She should really care about taking people's hard work/sustenance/home-made furnishings that probably took days to create. Doesn't though. Not even a little. This is why she needs a companion. 

"Ah fine, you women and your bloody soft hearts."

The Doctor pulls the ropes off the pig, makes a clicking sound, and it dutifully comes close enough that she can pick it up. It's heavier than it looks and she tries to remember to bend from the knees. By her calculations - which are definitely not just blind hope disguised as formulas - if the pig doesn't wriggle and she keeps a good pace, she should be able to clear the top of the hill and be out of sight before the fist-fight begins.

  


* * *

  


On the other side of the hill it turns out there's a sizeable forest curling around the fields, which looks like it will be good for getting lost in.

The Doctor stops. She was, of course, supposed to be looking for _people_.

The pig snuffles against her neck.

A pig's sort of a person. Closer than the screwdriver is to a person at least, so that counts as progress. She pats herself on the back, metaphorically, then puts the pig on the ground to see if she's still flexible enough to do it literally (she is).

The pig doesn't wander off - ticking one of her many boxes.

"So," The Doctor starts, making the first move. "Do you have a name? One you like? Doesn't have to be Basil. I don't like Basil. Not that you should change your name for me, I just mean that I was called Basil for a while and it was awful, because I didn't even like basil, which is a herb, and I don't know if you've ever had it, but I didn't like it and I think they use it in cooking pork, though I can't be sure because I don't cook, I just get takeaways, but it would make your name ironic, and if there are two things humans like it's food and irony - sorry, I haven't talked to anyone in a while, is this annoying?"

The pig oinks at her. The TARDIS doesn't translate it. Maybe because it isn't a translatable language. Maybe because it's unspeakably rude. She decides to give it the benefit of the doubt.

They walk together for a while, the Doctor finding that now she's started talking to it, she can't stop. She tells it about the types of trees in the forest, and then the trees on different planets, and when she can't remember if she used to climb silver trees with red leaves or red trees with silver leaves, the pig doesn't ask awkward questions, or tell her not to throw things, or wonder why she has to sit down for a little while.

  


* * *

  


The tree is buzzing, the Doctor realises, once everything's quiet again. She shuffles around in the leaf litter, disturbing the sleeping pig beside her, brushes an acorn from underneath her numb backside, and puts an ear to the trunk of the big oak. The pig looks around, seems to think that gathering the acorn would be too much effort, and watches her from its nest between the roots.

"Did I tell you about the Treeborgs yet? Techno trees on a spaceship? Maybe this is the anomaly I've been looking for."

The Doctor pulls out her screwdriver and taps it against the bark. It whirs, whines, then turns off.

"...Or it's just wood." She says despondently, sliding the sonic back into her pocket. 

Bu that buzzing-noise means something.

"I can climb trees." She says loudly.

The pig watches and doesn't help as she jumps to grab a branch and pulls herself up, scraping her hands a bit. This definitely used to be easier when she was younger, she thinks, hanging off the branch like a sloth until she can work out how to kick and roll onto it. How did she used to do it? The fact that she can't remember _that_ any better than red-or-silver triggers a burst of anger that gives her enough energy to keep climbing, and it only takes a few minutes to discover the source of the noise.

It is not - as she was starting to hope - a robotic owl.

It's a bee hive.

This should be the part where she ducks back down and tells the pig all about the mystery she's solved. But she doesn't. She's got an excellent sense of smell, even if her nose is a bit stuffy for some entirely unknown reason, and something about it smells really good. A very particular 'something'. 

There are quite a lot of bees. But bees can probably be reasoned with. And quite a lot of bees probably means quite a lot of honey.

"I say that looks like breakfast." The Doctor shouts down the tree, and en-route her mouth decides to add, " _What do you say, Piglet?_ "

Piglet. That was the word she was looking for.

  


* * *

  


Bees can't be reasoned with as it turns out, but both her and the pig are good at running - the pig, in fact, apparently even faster in a pinch. 

Now they're ambling along the other side of the forest, trees to their right and farmland again to their left. Her hands hurt from the tree, her neck stings where a bee snuck under her hair, her legs are tired from sprinting, not to mention her eyes itch and her head aches. 

"That's because of the pollen. Bees use it to make honey." She tells the pig, hiding her slightly snotty sleeve behind her back. The pig continues looking at her reproachfully. 

"Would a smackerel of honey sweeten you up?" The Doctor holds out her small amount of purloined honeycomb, and the pig takes a bite that includes a finger. She yelps and pulls away, glaring. 

"Didn't anyone tell you not to bite the extended hand of friendship..." She trails off and tries to remember how that's supposed to go, whilst trying to fit as much honeycomb as possible in her mouth.

They're half-way past a quaint little house, when the Doctor spots a hole in the bottom of its garden fence, greenery and a trellis just visible within. She sniffs loudly - the pig copying her companionably - and has An Idea.

"You're hungry, and honey's obviously not good for pigs. I'll get you a vegetable."

There's a door that leads straight into the garden, but a quick jiggle and a sonic tells her it's deadbolted. The Doctor looks at the hole.

"I can fit through that."

A few minutes later, she's succeeded in wiggling her shoulders and most of her upper body through. One sleeve of her jacket is soaked, from where she didn't realise the ground wasn't ground, but was in fact a water feature.

Reaching her hand out, she just manages to get hold of a cauliflower with the tips of her fingers. It takes a few more minutes of pulling it and grunting - again joined by the pig, who seems to find this all very exciting - until she manages to decapitate it from the rest of the plant with a cry of victory.

The Doctor lies face-first in the bed of cress for a minute, flexing her aching fingers and getting up close and personal with a caterpillar. Then she lifts herself up in a position she's fairly certain she used to make when she joined Tegan in her yoga, and pushes back through the hole.

Except she doesn't.

For the first time since she was trying to find a new pair of trousers in the TARDIS wardrobe, the Doctor remembers she has hips now. 

"Oh, bo-ther." She says, censoring herself for the sake of her youthful company. With a creak of wood, the Doctor tries again, but it doesn't give. 

Looking around the garden, she spies a water-barrel. She should be tall enough to climb on that and heave herself out. Fine, Plan B is always more fun anyway.

This time she pulls herself forward, towards the garden, taking care not to put her hand in the pond again. The fence flexes as she digs her toes into the grass, the pig squeals and snuffles around her, she growls and threatens and cajoles, but the pain eventually overwhelms her, and her body forces her to tap out. 

The Doctor lays back down again, using the cauliflower as a pillow and takes a few more moments to get her breathe back.

"I'm not stuck." She declares.

A slight flutter of panic starts in her stomach. This would definitely be more embarrassing than cracking her head on the TARDIS console, and she likes this body - it's attractive, strong, not arthritic, and reasonably ambidextrous instead of doing the thing where it can't decide whether it's left or right-handed and choosing to be neither.

The Doctor squirms and kicks. She's never been that great with being trapped in small spaces. It's why the TARDIS is far bigger inside than she strictly needs to be. She'd always hated those moments in Iris Wildthyme's TARDIS, her red smaller-on-the-inside bus, and not just because of the eye-watering amount of smoke and alcohol fumes, or Iris's tendency to use it as an excuse as to why she had to sit on his lap-

"Pull me out Sam, for heaven's sake get me out of here!"

The Doctor shoves hard, the pig pulls at her trousers, and she finally skids out of the hole, into the dusty mess of soil where her feet have churned up the grass. 

They stare at each other for a moment.

The Doctor clambers to her feet, and with the non-cauliflower holding hand, yanks her trousers back up. She can't remember if she's wearing the Star Wars underwear, her colourful dinosaur shorts, or the otherwise perfectly nondescript black pair with a little Batman logo on one leg that she absolutely doesn't call The Batpants. When the pig turns away, she checks. It's the dinosaur ones.

"I know they're not scientifically accurate, I just like the idea of purple pteranodons." She justifies. The pig keeps on sniffing at the ground.

She gives it a few seconds, in the hopes that it's erasing the memory of this experience.

"Here, a vegetable." The Doctor says finally, holding it out.

The pig looks up, but doesn't take it. Maybe it's judging her.

"Hey, you were going to be someone's dinner and I stole you." 

The pig still doesn't take it.

She looks at her still fairly honey-covered hand and dabs a bit on, before wiping the rest of it on one of its leaves. Now it takes it, and starts devouring the cauliflower with gusto. A pig after her own hearts.

Feeling accomplished, the Doctor looks smug and tucks her hair behind her ear. This is a bad move because her hand gets it all sticky and it snags painfully. She wants to lick her fingers free from honey and dirt - she knows exactly where her hand's been, and it takes a lot to poison a Time Lord - but then again, the pig is watching, and that would probably be a socially not-good thing to do. It's nice to know there's someone keeping her on the straight and narrow. 

Going back to the fence with a little trepidation, the Doctor reaches into the hole with the arm that hasn't already been soaked, and swishes her hand in the pond. She shakes the water off and dries it on her trouser leg, nodding at the pig, who oinks at her. See, perfectly fit for society.

  


* * *

  


The orange light spreads like marmalade over the dry grass. The clouds are wispy and sparse, drifting slowly as if they are in no more of a rush than the two of them, and everything feels at peace. The warm air strokes lazily across her, barely tugging at her jacket that it's long since dried for her. It smells of hay and dandelion and smoke. Alright, so she has to ignore the sounds of fighting and jeering, and the cries of excited children shouting that the goats have escaped, and the splash of water being thrown and extinguishing flames with a hiss, but no moment is perfect.

"Sorry I called you Sam back there." The Doctor says quietly. "You'd have liked her. Smart. Adaptable. Kind. Vegetarian."

The pig grunts.

"I'm not. The TARDIS makes meat that's never seen a living thing, but I eat what I can get when I'm out. I like a curry. And a burger. And a bacon sandwich." She looks sideways at the pig, but it doesn't seem particularly bothered by this.

"That's not a threat!" The Doctor adds quickly, "Your Companion Doctor will never threaten to eat you. If your Companion Doctor does threaten to eat you, we urge you to disregard what it says."

The pig doesn't so much as snort in response, and she's forced to assume it doesn't get the reference and won't be helping her clear the multiplayer levels of her video games any time soon. 

The hill climbs a little steeper, and she assures the pig that it's the last one. Of course, she's said that about the last three as well. But as they crest it, a blue box comes into view, and she feels a tingle of butterflies at the sight of her, like she always does.

"Wait up, uh, pig." The Doctor calls, realising she'd stopped in her distraction, and chases after it.

"...Is it ok if I give you a name? I can keep trying until you feel happy with one. It took a while for me to find a name too." She says, voice becoming closer to a whisper. "If uh, if you want to come with me at all." She swallows and can't look at it, just in case it's looking at her like she's mad. Mad-woman in a box. It sounds different somehow.

"Can you keep a secret, Custard? There wasn't actually an anomaly. I lied. I do that. Quite a lot. I'm working on it." The pig brushes against her leg. She hadn't realised they were that close. "I just thought there might be some interesting people there, I was feeling a bit..." 'Lonely' doesn't feel like it covers the weird gnawing in her that makes her want to curl and hide away, while at the same time wanting to grab hold of someone and refuse to ever let go, so she lets it hang unfinished.

People don't bond with her like before. That's obvious. She thought it would be easier, certainly easier than last time, but instead it's like there's something about her that stops people wanting to hang around with her on a long-term basis. Or maybe it's her not connecting with them. Not putting in the effort. She didn't actually try to talk to anyone at the fair, did she? Didn't even get a toffee apple.

The pig isn't a companion; can't go on adventures and save the day, can't pass her tools when she's working on the TARDIS, or tell her how the universe looks through its eyes, or play video games with her. But she can look after it. Keep it safe, fed, warm, loved and content. The pig without a name - the pig with many names. The pig who's spent their whole life running but still resents being forced to do it. The pig who bites. She'd like it to be happy.

The Doctor unlocks the TARDIS doors and swings them both open.

From deep in her pocket, she fishes out a key with a chain on it. She didn't put it on, it isn't hers. A reminder that things don't always work out. With a cough, she looks the pig in the eye and drops it onto the ground.

It's like the test with the word, back when she was a recluse living on a cloud. If they know this one specific word, then magically it's meant to be, and the decision is made. Her brain repels from the memory like a magnet being flipped. It's unfair, and stupid, and not how the universe works.

Feeling a little ashamed of herself, the Doctor stoops to pick it back up, but a snout knocks her hand out of the way and the pig grabs the key and carries it, chain dragging, into the TARDIS as if it's decided she's its now.

The Doctor follows the pig in and watches it do three loops of the console, then skid to a stop and roll around on its back, before finally lying still. The chain has fallen over its face, and the Doctor gently moves to take it off, but as she leans over, the pig waggles its ears at her, it drops the key, and the chain slides down like a necklace.

"Would you like to stay here, Sigma?"

It oinks at her, and tentatively she reaches down and scratches its ears, then its neck and belly as it squirms happily, like it hasn't felt affection in forever. She can't think of anything to say, so they sit silently cuddled together, and that's nice too.

The pig doesn't ask how her whole home fits into a little wooden box. It doesn't ask where they're going to go next. It doesn't ask how she got a time machine, or where she's from. And it doesn't ask why she has to sit down for a little while, either.

  


* * *

  



End file.
